Bukele’s New Blow to El Salvador’s Justice System

By Alejandra Garcia on May 6, 2021

Photo: EFE

President Nayib Bukele has once again made a move against El Salvador’s democracy. Last Saturday, two months after the country´s parliamentary elections, the pro-Bukele majority in Congress was sworn in. Instead of trying to tackle the serious problems affecting the country, the new lawmakers, almost all from the ruling New Ideas Party, turned directly against the Supreme Court and the Attorney General’s Office of El Salvador.

Only minutes after taking the podium, the National Assembly controlled by Bukele voted to dismiss the regular and alternate magistrates of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber. This dismissal was followed shortly after by the announcement that the incumbent Attorney General Raul Melara was also dismissed.

Why attack such a frontal attack on the judiciary? Salvadoran journalist Carlos Lopez answers: “The biggest obstacle to the president’s objectives is the rule of law. He attacks the Constitutional Chamber because it stopped, or at least hindered, some of his measures that the magistrates found to be unconstitutional.”

According to the new legislators, the magistrates were fired for halting some of President Bukele´s decrees to allegedly combat the pandemic in the country. “Not only did we have the power to do it, but the people asked us to do it,” Bukele said to justify his decision before the international community.

However, Lopez maintains that there other reasons behind Bukele´s motives for this decision. “Bukele and his henchmen attacked the Prosecutor’s Office because it could hinder future actions, such as the prosecution of former officials. Or it could start additional proceedings against officials of the current administration,” the journalist wrote in El Faro.

In other words, Bukele has disrupted El Salvador´s democratic path, and he now intends to put under his service two key instances of the rule of law. This turn of events was predictable. One year ago, the President started a personal battle against the justice system for trying to halt his plans.

On February 9, 2020, he burst into Congress accompanied by riot police and Army soldiers wearing bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles. His intention: to put pressure on legislators to approve a $109 million loan from the US to reduce street crime but the opposition from the left and right said the money was really earmarked to militarize the police and was a coup attempt in the making to solidify Bukele’s power. This was the preamble to what happened just one week ago in the country, one of the poorest nations in Latin America.

“Bukele wants to stay in power forever, mixing constant pressure with grotesque threats. Now, once he has gained control of the legislature, he has launched what looks like a general offensive against everything that does not bend to his desires,” journalist Francesco Manetto described in the El Pais journal.

The new Parliament’s decision received public criticism from President Joe Biden’s Administration through Juan Gonzalez, his advisor for Latin America. “This is not the way things are done,” the White House official wrote.

The warning is not the first one issued to Bukele by the new U.S. administration. In early April, State Department spokesman Ned Price reacted to the growing rapprochement between the governments of El Salvador and China.

“El Salvador’s receptiveness to China’s apparent interference in the domestic politics of a Western Hemisphere country is of great concern to the U.S. and it will lead to a re-evaluation of our relationship with this Latin American country,” Price said.

The political circle of the “influencer” president is closing around him. The rift between Bukele and Biden is not because the U.S. cares whether or not he is anti-democratic. The paranoia runs both ways: Washington fears losing its influence in allied Latin American governments, and Bukele has embarked on an authoritarian drift that makes his country fear that the worst is coming.

Bukele, 39, came to power in 2019 driven by popular discontent with El Salvador’s historical political forces. In the legislative elections held two months ago, he achieved a triumph unseen for almost three decades.

But despite his electoral support, “he is not proving to be up to the power he has received. Populist and authoritarian, the president is on his way to becoming a problem rather than a solution. His words, the dismissal of judges and prosecutors, and the threats he makes against all those who are not to his liking, speak volumes,” Manetto concluded.